Short was the career.
Like the Maid of Orleans, she only did enough to verify her
credentials, and then passed from a scene on which she was, probably,
a premature apparition.
When the young girl joined the army, where the report of her exploits
had preceded her, she was received in a manner that marks the usual
state of feeling. Some of the officers were disappointed at her quiet
manners; that she had not the air and tone of a stage-heroine. They
thought she could not have acted heroically unless in buskins; had no
idea that such deeds only showed the habit of her mind. Others talked
of the delicacy of her sex, advised her to withdraw from perils and
dangers, and had no comprehension of the feelings within her breast
that made this impossible. The gentle irony of her reply to these
self-constituted tutors (not one of whom showed himself her equal in
conduct or reason), is as good as her indignant reproof at a later
period to the general, whose perfidy ruined all.
But though, to the mass of these men, she was an embarrassment and a
puzzle, the nobler sort viewed her with a tender enthusiasm worthy of
her. "Her name," said her biographer, "is known throughout Europe.
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